intro to gender

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yrtraq777

Humanities

Description

Critical Commentaries

WOMS/SOC 306

Length: 1 page

Times New Roman, 12pt font, 1" margins, double spaced

Due: Class Periods Assigned

Critical Commentaries will be based on your interaction with the assigned readings. The success of this class depends on everyone doing the reading before class and coming to class prepared to discuss it. Many people read, but never think about what they are reading. In these assignments you will need to keep a detailed response to the readings. These can include key passages, key terms, and information that you deem important. Your Format should follow these guidelines:

  1. You will be required to create a Discussion Question: A question that could be used to stimulate class discussion. These questions could ask other students to discuss a particular point in the reading, to identify key concepts from the reading, to examine the conclusions of one author in light of another’s work, to speculate the implications of a particular argument, or to develop ideas about social action or some way of changing society to make it better. These questions should raise a specific issue from the readings you are interested in discussing or that has puzzled you in some way. Be sure to refer to the readings in your question. (5 pts)
  2. Next, speculate on what an answer to your discussion question might be given the current readings. You are welcome to include a personal reflection given what you’ve learned in the course or your own personal experiences (like a critical reaction paper), but you must refer back to (citing page numbers) the reading(s) for the day. (25 pts)
  3. Finally, list 2 key points, either terms (with definitions) or take home messages that you believe your classmates should understand from the readings.(10 pts)

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THE CHANGING WORKPLACE • Women have equal protection in the workplace so why aren’t they as successful as men? • In the first year of college, male graduates earn, on average, $8,000 more than women per year. • This gap goes from $0.82 the first year after graduation to $0.69 ten years later. THE CHANGING WORKPLACE • Women were being pushed out of the workforce after World War II and nothing was more glamourous than being an airline stewardess (1945). • Stewardesses were adventurous, saw the world, and got to rub elbows with the elite who were fortunate enough to fly. • Airlines hired women whom they believed represented ideal femininity: White, educated, slender, and beautiful. • In hiring this specific type of woman, airlines were selling women’s attractiveness to customers using sexual innuendo. THE CHANGING WORKPLACE Continental: "We Really Move Our Tails for You" National: "We'll Fly You Like You've Never Been Flown Before" Air France: "Have You Ever Done It the French Way?" Air Jamaica: "We Make You Feel Good All Over" THE CHANGING WORKPLACE • Standards of appearance that could disqualify women included big feet, chubby legs, poor posture, the wrong hair cut, glasses, acne, short nails, imperfect teeth, not wearing makeup, or any other flaw recruiters could identify. • They also had objections to broad noses, course hair, full lips, and hook noses….all of which have racial biases attached. • Airlines also terminated women who got married, had children, or reached their early thirties. • “If you haven’t found a man to keep you by the time you are 28, then TWA won’t want you either.” ~Flight Attendant Manager • Sexual harassment, racism, and poor pay are among other issues experienced. THE CHANGING WORKPLACE • In 1964, the Civil Rights Act had passed and stewardesses began to file the 100 lawsuits that would be filed on their behalf over the next 18 months. • Companies discrimination practices slowed but men still had advantage: • Benefits, on-the-job training, management positions, and most top positions. • The most evident example of this in the gender pay gap: the difference between the incomes of the average man and woman who work full time . • This gap is persistent across race, education level, geographic location, age, and 200 years of history. • Women with college degrees will make $713,000 less than the average man in her lifetime. THE GENDER PAY GAP IS REAL GENDER PAY GAP BROKEN DOWN JOB SEGREGATION Women earn thewith • Gendered job segregation is the practice of filling majority occupations of science mostly male or mostly female workers. degrees in Iran and Saudi Arabia • 78% of flight attendants are female and 96% of pilots are male. Medicine in Russia and is a female job • Jobs areFinland socially constructed in a way that suggests they are best suited for stereotypical women or men, while other features that would undermine that idea are ignored. Computer science in • There is variation in how jobs are gendered across cultures. Malaysia and Armenia • In India women make up a largeare share of the construction industry, which makes female dominated sense to them because women are in charge of the home. JOB SEGREGATION: HOW MUCH JOB SEGREGATION IS THERE? • Internationally, the amount of gender segregation in jobs varies. • To achieve integration in the United States, 34 % of workers would have to switch to a differently gendered job. • U.K. 37%, Japan 23%, Canada & Australia 38%, Italy 29%, Israel 41%. General Marcia Martin Anderson is the highest• We alsoMajor see gender segregation within occupations. ranking American inDoctors the history • Wait staff isAfrican divided by the type ofwoman restaurant, (55% of the pediatricians are women onlymade 15% of surgeons), the section United States Army.butShe history in 2011 as theof a department store. first African American woman in the Army’s history to • Genderachieve intersects with other to stratify the workforce. the rank ofcharacteristics major general. • Race: African American women in the population (6%) vs • • military(33% active duty women). Immigration: Almost all taxi drivers in NYC are male, 84% are immigrants. Sexual orientation: Lesbian and Bisexual women are 10x more likely to be police officers. JOB SEGREGATION: CAUSES OF JOB SEGREGATION • The idea that men and women respond to gender stereotypes when planning, training, and applying for jobs is referred to as the socialization hypothesis. • Women in “computer geeky” rooms said they were less likely to consider a computer science major. • Another factor is the network hypothesis: Hiring often occurs through personal networks, which are themselves gendered, so hiring is gendered in turn. • The employer selection hypothesis proposes that employers tend to prefer men for masculine jobs and women for feminine jobs, slotting applicants into gender-consistent roles during hiring and promotion. • The desertion hypothesis sees workers tending to abandon counter-stereotypical occupations at a higher rate than stereotypical ones. JOB SEGREGATION: DIFFERENT AND UNEQUAL • When the occupation of stewardess was feminized, the importance of the job was downplayed and the subordinate role of supportive and sometimes sexually playful service was played up. • We have seen this trend in other professions such as cheerleading, and clerical work. • Women’s support work (secretarial) translated into mathematical analysis, early computer programming, and map-making during WWII. • Women held over 60% of the jobs in statistical analysis at the CIA until the occupation became associated with men and has risen in both prestige and pay. JOB SEGREGATION: DIFFERENT AND UNEQUAL • Because status is connected to the gender of a job, we also find an androcentric pay scale, a strong correlation between wages and the gender composition of the job. • Gender composition of a job is the single largest contributor to the gender wage gap. • More important than unionization, marital status, industry, supply and demand, education, and experience. • The effect grows larger as occupations become increasingly male or female dominated. • If we have the feminization of poverty, based on the same concept it might be reasonable to call the concentration of men in high-earning occupations a masculinization of wealth. • In sum, the pay scale is not gendered because these occupations just happen to be ones that require more education, skill, or experience. JOB SEGREGATION: THE VALUE OF GENDERED WORK • Flight attendants are doing a job that is suppose to remain invisible unless needed. • They have extensive skills and training including first aid, dealing with aggressive people, keeping people calm, crisis management, combat, and climate specific survival skills just to name a few. • Passengers do not want to be reminded of this as it reminds them how dangerous flying is. • These skills remain invisible to us and the work we do see is dismissed as unskilled. • Flight attendants are also skilled at emotion work: the act of controlling one’s emotions (being nice) and managing the emotions of others (unpredictable). This is a valuable skill. • If being nice came naturally, then attendants are just being themselves… we don’t pay people for that. • To say that because women are naturally good at something, they needn’t be compensated for it, is a great example of benevolent sexism. JOB SEGREGATION: THE VALUE OF GENDERED WORK • Stereotypes of men include being good with their hands, talented at understanding how things work, and steadfast behind the wheel. • If these things come naturally to men we can conclude that men would also naturally go into fields utilizing these traits (surgeons, engineers, truck drivers). • That’s just how men are, we will pay them for their time, but it’s ridiculous to argue these are skills. • This is how women’s work is understood, unworthy of compensation as skilled labor. • The devaluation of feminized occupations is especially acute for care work: work that involves face-to-face caretaking of the physical, emotional, and educational needs of others. • We pay people more to check out coats and wash our cars than we do to take care of our kids. DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT • The civil rights act of 1964 made discrimination illegal, but enforcing new law meant going to court, proving discrimination with intent, and creating consequences. • Sociologist Kristen Schilt interviewed 29 transmen and found that 2/3received posttransition advantage at work. • Their ideas were taken more seriously. • Their advice was welcomed instead of dismissed, • They were “right a lot more”. • They could do less work and get more credit than they did when they were female. • They could be less nice without consequences, • Went from being perceived as overly assertive to “take charge”. DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT HOSTILE AND BENEVOLENT SEXISM • Hostile sexism can sometimes take the form of isolation or deliberate carelessness. Women in male dominated fields may be left with the choice of proving they can work like a man (sometimes a two-man-job) and doing the dirtiest work or getting hurt. If they refuse that kind of work they get accused of demanding special treatment. • • • In other cases women are seen as interrupting the boys-will-beboys work relationship that makes working in male-dominated occupations fun for some men. Looking at pornography or ogling attractive women is sexual harassment. The resentment against women for “ruining” it sometimes manifests as hostile sexism. • • DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT HOSTILE AND BENEVOLENT SEXISM • In extreme cases, women are targeted sexually • Some women are retaliated against or fired when they refuse to engage in sexual contact. • Other women are victims/survivors of sexual violence. • Sexual harassment is about men reasserting their • dominance, not some harmless show of attraction. When a woman’s presence potentially degrades the identity of the dominant group, she becomes a symbolic threat. Her presence is a threat to men’s self-esteem if their self-esteem comes from being a man doing men’s work. • DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT HOSTILE AND BENEVOLENT SEXISM • Discrimination can also be a form of benevolent sexism. • Men who are trying to be chivalrous end up undermining women’s career trajectories because it can get in the way of them learning their job or demonstrating their skills. • On average, men with housewives are more likely to be discriminatory. • They are also more likely to be bosses, officers, and managers. • Companies employing more women are more likely to have staff that believe women are just as capable. • The presence of high status female managers brings down the pay gap. DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT THE DOUBLE BIND • Men are seen as better leaders and supervisors no matter what qualities are considered ideal for the job. • In one study, participants moved the parameters in order to ensure that a male job candidate was seen as more qualified (the traits were streetwise or formally educated for police chief). • Both men and women exhibited this bias, but men more so than women. • The double bind then, tells women that to be successful at their job they must do masculinity, but to be accepted by her boss and colleagues she needs to do femininity. • The problem is that feminine women are likeable but incompetent, and the opposite for masculine. • This can impact women asking for a raise. • Women who are confident, ask for a raise, and negotiate are evaluated far more negatively, being penalized 5.5 times more than men no matter how they asked. DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT INVISIBLE OBSTRUCTIONS • Sexism and the double bind are part of the invisible barrier between women and the top positions in masculine occupations otherwise know as the glass ceiling. • Men enter the workforce with higher rank, better salary, more advancement, and more pay increase. • When women do break through the glass ceiling, they often encounter a glass cliff. • A heightened risk of failing, compared with similar men. • Companies tend to promote women in times of crisis, setting them up for failure. • When women succeed, and they often do, they are “rewarded” and given more fragile/high • risk assignments and eventually do fail or burn out from the stress. Dissatisfaction, feelings of underappreciation, blocked opportunities, discrimination, and harassment are more significant reason for women leaving the workforce than spending time with family. It’s no wonder women seem less ambitious. DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT FOR MEN IN FEMALE-DOMINATED OCCUPATIONS • Although men in female-dominated fields are disadvantaged relative to other men in terms of wages and gender policing, they are not disadvantaged in these occupations relative to their female coworkers. • Men often face a glass escalator: an invisible ride to the top offered to white men in a female-dominated field. • Gender stereotypes are at work here. • Positive: men are stronger leaders and better suited for management. • Negative: men aren’t really good at feminized work. PARENTHOOD: THE FACTS AND THE FICTION • The conflict of work/life balance rests on the ideology of intensive motherhood and the ideal worker norm: the idea that an employee should have the ability to devote themselves to their job without the distraction of family responsibilities. • Employment continues to operate as if workers have domestic wives and those who cant work as if they do are lesser workers. • Women are penalized by a loss of wages when they become mothers (motherhood penalty). • This gap is larger than the one between men and women. • Women who become mothers will experience, on average, a 7 percent decline in their wages for each child. • Married fathers experience a wage increase (fatherhood premium) of 4-7%. PARENTHOOD: THE FACTS AND THE FICTION WORK AND THE DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD LABOR • Women often take more time off than men to care for children only to return less experienced. • Due to the second shift and specialization, women may embrace being put on a mommy track: a workplace euphemism that refers to expecting less from mothers, with the understanding that they are sacrificing the right to expect equal pay, regular raises, or promotions. • Fathers often increase their efforts at work believing in the breadwinner role. • Employers may accept that a woman needs to take time to respond to children and emergencies but do not accept that men have to do the same. PARENTHOOD: THE FACTS AND THE FICTION BELIEFS ABOUT MOMS AND DADS • Moms face a big problem: their supervisors and coworkers don’t take them seriously as employees. • The more motherly a mom is, the more they are devalued. • Women's disadvantage is not rooted in gender alone, but is strongly related to the intersection of gender and parenthood.
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Attached.

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO GENDER

Introduction to Gender
Name
Institutional Affiliation

1

INTRODUCTION TO GENDER

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Introduction to Gender
Job Segregation

Discussion Question: What do you understand by gendered job segregation, and what is its
impact in the workplace?

Possible Answer:
The concept ‘gendered job segregation’ refers to the practice of employing only one
gender, either males or females, in the workplace. It particularly entails filling empl...


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